


Stranded

by PunkPinkPower



Category: Power Rangers Samurai
Genre: Boys Kissing, Desert Island, Developing Relationship, Fluff, Friendship/Love, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Serious Injuries, The Power Heals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-16
Updated: 2013-08-16
Packaged: 2017-12-23 16:08:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/928484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PunkPinkPower/pseuds/PunkPinkPower
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jayden and Antonio end up stranded on a deserted island in the middle of the ocean, and have to make the best of the situation until they are rescued.  </p><p>Or, in which Jayden realizes he doesn’t actually have any survival skills and appreciates Antonio a whole hell of a lot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stranded

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tsukino_Akume](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tsukino_Akume/gifts).



> For Akume, who really, really deserves 15,000 words of Jaytonio all the time.

When he opens his eyes, the first thing he sees is Antonio’s face hovering over him. 

For a moment, a split second, Jayden feels like this is normal and everything is fine. And then his lungs burn, and his stomach lurches, and he’s twisting and turning over, coughing up acid out onto the golden sand. 

“That’s right, Jay,” Antonio’s voice coos, as he rubs his back, “Get it out. It’s okay.” 

Jayden knows its okay, obviously, and he feels suddenly babied. He reaches out a hand to shove Antonio’s hand away from his back and then immediately feels a pang of regret at doing so. 

The action doesn’t faze Antonio. “I’m so glad you’re okay,” he says, sitting back from his hunch, “You really had me worried.” 

“Happened?” Jayden asks, as the memories of the storm and pulling in the sails and holding onto Antonio in the cabin begin to come back to his mind. 

“Boat sunk,” Antonio says casually. “The storm blew us into shallow water, and it tore a hole in the hull. You can sort of see the tip of the mast if you look out over that way,” Antonio points towards the water, towards the crashing waves. “The cabin filled up and-- is your shoulder okay?” 

Antonio reaches out again, gingerly touches Jayden’s shoulder, and Jayden has a sudden vivid memory of using it to break apart the cabin door as it had filled with water, of pushing Antonio out and trying to swim to the surface amid the crashing waves and currents. Jayden rolls his shoulder, feels it stiffen painfully. “Its fine,” he tells Antonio, whose eyebrows knit into a frown on his face. 

“If you say so,” Antonio agrees, but he doesn’t look happy about it. 

“Did you,” Jayden wonders, looking around the beach, “Did we wash up here or?” 

“You weigh a ton, even when swimming,” Antonio says sheepishly, a little grin on his face, “But yeah, I think I managed to get us to this shoreline before we both passed out.” 

“Thanks,” Jayden says reflexively, and a funny look goes over Antonio’s face for a second, a look that seems offended, maybe, but it’s gone as quickly as it comes. 

“We must have been out a long time,” Jayden continues, eyeing the water. It’s perfectly calm. 

Antonio shrugs. “The oceans funny like that,” he says, and they stare out at the gentle rolling waves for a moment in silence. “We should see if anything from the boat washed up,” Antonio stands after a moment, offers Jayden a hand, and Jayden sways a little when he stands. “Or I can go look,” Antonio amends quickly, both of his hands suddenly on Jayden’s arms, “I think you should rest.” 

“I’ll be okay,” Jayden assures him, reaching up and giving his hand a squeeze before shrugging out of Antonio’s grip. He looks around the small pristine beach, filled with seaweed and drift wood, a bunch of strange looking plants growing further up the shore which eventually turns into a tall, ominous looking island forest. “Where are we?” 

“No idea,” Antonio answers immediately, as though he’d been wondering the same thing. 

“And there’s no way to find out,” Jayden assumes, glancing back out at the sunk boat several miles out. 

“Not without the GPS system currently strapped down in the cabin of our sunken ship, no,” Antonio agrees, crossing his arms worriedly. “We might be able to get a general location tonight from the stars, but not an exact one.” 

Something occurs to Jayden then, and he’s reaching into his pocket even as the feeling of panic strikes him. “Our morphers,” Jayden says, checking all of his pockets to be sure. 

“Still in the tackle box,” Antonio says as calmly as possible, watching Jayden frantically search himself. He reaches out, grabs Jayden’s hand to stop him and looks him in the eye. “Where we left them yesterday when we went swimming,” he confirms, and Jayden’s stomach sinks. The tackle box was attached to the ship, too, strapped in tighter than any of their luggage. 

Jayden looks back around, looks at the long running beach, the dark green leafy jungle, the hot sun overhead, and back out at the very tip of the mast of the ship. A wave rushes up and crashes over their feet as the tide starts coming back in, and Jayden finds himself holding onto Antonio’s hand as the uncertainty and fear grip him deep inside. 

“This isn’t good,” he tells Antonio, “This really isn’t good.”

***

“Hey, look!” Antonio shouts, and Jayden turns from where he’s wading in the water, looking for any of their belongings. “Sunscreen!” Antonio waves his arms, smiles brightly, pointing to the small bottle of suntan lotion like it’s going to save their lives. Jayden can’t help but smile back before he shakes his head and keeps looking. 

They only come up with four items from the boat, after scouring the entire beach line; a torn, red blanket that Jayden had used the take a nap on the deck yesterday morning, the sunscreen, their small dental kit (“Hey, dental floss!” Antonio exclaims happily, prying the lid up to see how much they have), and one can of chicken broth. 

“Okay,” Antonio is saying, as they look over the supplies laid out in the shade next to them, and he starts muttering something is Spanish Jayden doesn’t catch, “But I can work with this.” Antonio looks up at him, smiles a great big smile, and then reaches over and puts both of his hands on Jayden’s cheeks. “We’re going to be just fine.”

Jayden frowns, shrugs Antonio’s hands off. “Antonio,” he says skeptically, “It’s going to be over a week before anyone even knows we’re missing.”

“Yeah,” Antonio agrees, picking up the kit with their tooth brushes and dental floss inside, “And as soon as Ji realizes we’re not at the docks, he’ll have everyone out in the zords looking for us. We’re supposed to get back on the 27th,” Antonio says, and he’s looking around now, talking absently and waving his hands as he kicks sand around with his feet and scours the dirt, “And it’s the 19th, so we only have to survive for nine, maybe ten days at the most. Ah!” Antonio exclaims and he picks up a rock happily, “Fantastico! Now I just need a stick.”

“Antonio,” Jayden objects again, wondering what he’s doing, “We only have a can of chicken broth to eat, and no other supplies. This situation is a little more serious than that.”

Antonio waves him off, makes a face like he’s being absurd. “We’ve got plenty,” Antonio tells him, turning around, “See? Dental floss, and a sharp rock! I can make a spear, and then I can catch us fish and we can roast them. We’ve got a blanket, and there’s lots of driftwood around here to make a shelter with. We’ll even be able to keep that pretty pale skin of yours nice,” Antonio laughs, kicking the sunscreen over to Jayden happily. 

“Antonio,” Jayden starts again, and Antonio groans. 

“Jayden, you have got to learn to be a little bit optimistic,” he insists, returning to scouring the tree line for a nice stick, “I mean, the only thing we really need to worry about finding is fresh water, but I hear birds in here, so there must be a pool of drinking water somewhere, and we can go exploring as soon as I have my spear,” Antonio picks up a stick with enthusiasm, throws it down as it snaps easily, “We’ll manage. So our plans got thrown a little bit askew,” Antonio continues, glancing over his shoulder with a shrug, “and instead of spending the next week on my fishing boat, we get to spend it on a beautiful tropical island. There’ll be a little bit more manual labor involved, but we can handle it.”

Jayden watches Antonio search, and he goes about twenty feet away before he yells, “Perfecto!” and holds up a large, thick stick as he walks back. When he gets back to Jayden he sits down, pulls out the dental floss, and begins fastening the sharp rock to the stick as best he can. To Jayden’s surprise, it works, and they still have some floss left over. Antonio is holding up his new spear proudly after about ten minutes, throwing it around to test it out. “See?” He says, smile glowing. 

Jayden can’t help but smile back. “Antonio, your fishing boat sunk,” Jayden says, amused, “But I should know better than to think a little inconvenience like that would sink your spirits.”

“To be fair,” Antonio says, holding out his hand to Jayden, who takes it and lets Antonio pull him up, “I should give you some of the credit. You’re at the top of my ‘Things I’d Take If I Were Stranded on a Desert Island for the Rest of My Life’ list.” 

Jayden laughs, feels his cheeks grow hot, and he drops Antonio’s hand. He never knows how to respond when Antonio says things like that, when he makes Jayden’s head buzz and his stomach feel funny and his skin tingle. 

“Come on,” Antonio says, smacking Jayden hard on the shoulder, “We defeated Xandred, we can survive a weeklong vacation in a tropical paradise.”

Jayden grins, and Antonio starts off into the brush and Jayden follows, and he starts to feel like they actually can. 

***

The island, it turns out, is only about a mile wide. They reach the other side of the forest and come out at some cliffs, and Jayden hadn’t realized they’d been walking uphill. He realizes how much easier it is to walk downhill as they go back into the forest, looking again for some sort of river or pond. 

It’s a dense thicket of trees and underbrush, and Antonio makes jokes about the likelihood of indigenousness peoples inhabiting such a small island. Jayden doesn’t worry too much, seeing as they haven’t seen any skulls perched atop sticks or other movie warning clichés like the ones in the pirate movies Mike had made him watch. He feels both safe and incredibly alert, knowing it’s just he and Antonio on the island. Because it’s just Antonio and him on the island, and he trusts Antonio and knows Antonio will take care of him with the same fervent passion as Jayden would care for him. 

But then, he thinks, it’s just he and Antonio on the island, alone together, for over a week, and it feels somehow more intimate and uncertain than the vacation on the fishing boat had. On the boat, he’d known their boundaries; Jayden slept in the hammock in the cabin, and Antonio out under the stars on the deck. Here they’d be sharing the red blanket. On the boat, Jayden had been helping Antonio with his work, with his passion for fishing, and now they were working together to try and survive. It was… Jayden had always had a difficult time establishing working parameters when it came to Antonio. 

He imagined this time would be no different. 

“Hey, look, I think I see water!” Antonio says ahead of him, using his stick to hold back some thorny bushes for them to step through. The thorns still scrap Jayden’s legs as he pushes through, but Antonio is right, there is a pool of water directly ahead. 

“Good work, Antonio,” Jayden says, and Antonio beams before stepping forward and scooping some water into his hands. He’s lifting it to his lips when Jayden says, “Antonio! You don’t know it’s safe to drink yet!” 

Antonio laughs. “They’re drinking it,” he says, pointing to some birds bathing across the pond, “And they wouldn’t be if there was something wrong with it.” 

“It still might not be safe,” Jayden says, glancing at the water warily. 

“Tell you what,” Antonio says, his voice amused, “I’ll try some, and if I don’t die, then you can have some!” 

“Antonio,” Jayden scolds, giving Antonio a side long glare. 

“No, no, I insist,” Antonio laughs, slurping water out of his hand, “It’s my duty to the Shiba family! Lauren can knight me when we get home.” 

Jayden rolls his eyes, but he brings his hands down to the water and lifts it to his own lips. He feels foolishly like a child trying to prove he isn’t afraid, but the cool water does feel good going down his throat. 

They sit on the ground by the water, enjoying the shade and watching the tropical birds for a few minutes. “We can’t camp in here,” Antonio says thoughtfully, pulling some water through his dark hair, “Not if we want to be able to be found when they come looking. We should try and find some big shells or gourds or something to keep water in, so we don’t have to walk half a mile every time we need a drink.”

Jayden nods. “We should get back to the shoreline, start building a shelter, and a fire before it gets dark.” 

Antonio looks over at him, grins. “See, what did I tell you? It’s gonna be fine, amigo,” Antonio says. 

Jayden nods again. “I’ll gather up some wood on the way back for the fire,” he says, standing and brushing off his shorts, “And you look for things to hold water.” 

“And then I’ll get us some fish to eat and you can look for mangos,” Antonio agrees, holding out a hand for Jayden to pull him up. Jayden does, and Antonio leans forward, right into Jayden’s chest and presses their cheeks together, whispers in Jayden’s ear, “Stop worrying so much,” and his eyelashes brush Jayden’s cheek before he pulls away and starts walking. 

Jayden’s face grows hot at the contact, at the feel of Antonio’s smooth cheek brushing his three day old stubble, at the unintentional butterfly kiss. Jayden trips a little over his own feet as he makes to follow him, manages to get his blushing under control by the time he catches up. 

***

Jayden comes back with a pile of wood large enough to build a fire for three days. Antonio is gourd-less, having spent a good deal of time laughing at Jayden picking up wood almost too big for him to carry instead of looking for water holding devices. 

“Okay, Shiba,” Antonio kids, skipping off towards the water, “Build us a fire while I go get some dinner!” 

Jayden watches him go with a smile, having dropped the logs in a heap next to their supplies. He turns back to them, and he stares at them for a long minute. A fire, right. Okay. 

Jayden grabs a couple of the larger logs and puts them in a heap, and then reaches into his pocket for his morph- oh. Right. Jayden stares at the logs, his heart sinking. How was he supposed to start a fire without his symbol power? 

He wants to curse, the easy way Mike and Mia do, to see if it will help, but he can never bring himself to do it, always hearing Ji’s voice in his head-- _“That is not an appropriate way for the head of the Shiba clan to behave, Jayden”_ \--and old habits die hard. He tries to think about some of the movies the others had made him watch, tries to remember how they built fires in the stories. 

Rubbing two sticks together? It sounds right. He grabs one of the little sticks and one of the medium sized ones and starts rubbing them against one another over the others logs. It does nothing, so he increases his speed. 

He gets a splinter. 

One of the sticks slips in his hand as he furiously rubs the sticks together and pierces his thumb with a small thorn, and he drops both the sticks and puts his thumb in his mouth, and then regrets it as it tastes salty from the ocean and sand. 

He sits back letting his legs go out in front of him as he tries to pick the splinter from his thumb. There must be a trick to starting fires this way. He goes back to the only thing he knows, which is symbol power. If he were going to start a fire with his symbol, he’d still have to have a way for it to take--the smaller sticks in his pile were surely enough?--and it would need to breathe. 

Jayden takes two of the bigger logs out the pile and tosses them aside, arranges the logs so that there is space between them. Then he grabs the sticks again, and tries holding one steady while he rubs the other against it. 

He’s expecting smoke, or sparks, or something. 

But he’s met with nothing. 

“Hey, dinner is served!” Antonio’s voice says, and he’s coming back from the shore with two fish on his spear, “And look what I found-” he starts, and then sees Jayden. “Everything okay?” 

Jayden scowls, looks back at the logs and sets his jaw. 

Antonio comes over, sticks the end of the spear into the sand so it stays standing, and sits down next to Jayden. “How’s the fire coming?”

Jayden huffs, and then shrugs. “I don’t have my symbol power,” he admits, still picking at his thumb, “So it’s not going as well as it could.” 

Antonio reaches over and pulls Jayden’s hand toward him. “What did you do?” He asks, holding Jayden’s thumb up. 

“Splinter,” Jayden says, and he watches as Antonio picks very carefully at Jayden’s hand and then lifts it up to his lips. He sucks at the splinter with his lips, and Jayden opens his mouth and nothing comes out but a strangled noise of disproval. And then Antonio pulls away and spits to the side, and let’s Jayden’s hand go. 

“Better?” He asks, standing like he already knows the answer. 

Jayden nods, cradling his thumb and not trusting his voice. Antonio was so strange, sometimes. Regular people didn’t go around putting the bloody thumbs of others in their mouths, did they? It was… it had sent a shiver down Jayden’s spin.

“We need a better stick for that,” Antonio says, pushing a few apart in the larger pile and coming up with a curved one, “And some of that dental floss.”

It takes Antonio all of three minutes to ties the floss to one of the sticks and use three sticks, not two, in a strange arrangement, to start the fire. It smokes, and then Antonio lowers his mouth down and, with the same gentleness he’d used to pull the splinter from Jayden’s thumb, blows the fire to life. 

Jayden stares at the fire, maybe a little bit in disbelief and a lot a bit in embarrassment. Antonio had made it look so easy, but then, Antonio did that with a lot of things. 

“It’s okay,” Antonio tells Jayden, reaching over and putting a hand on his shoulder, his thumb stroking back and forth gently. “But let’s not let it go out, yeah? I don’t know if I can do that again.” 

He smiles, gives Jayden’s shoulder a squeeze and then drops his hand. “Look what I found! A water holding shell!” He changes the subject, passes the shell to Jayden. It’s big and deep, and will work for keeping water nearby very well. “What do you say we eat these fish, and then get some water and finish setting up camp?” 

Jayden nods, helps Antonio skewer the fish and put them in the sand near the fire to cook, and tries not to feel like a burden.

***

The rest of the day doesn’t get much better for Jayden. He offers to go get the water while Antonio rests, and then he loses his way on the way back. Antonio comes looking for him, helps him and marks the trees along with path with long notches with his spear so that “neither of them” will get lost again. 

Then they attempt to set up some sort of shelter with some of the larger drift wood and logs, and Jayden stubs his toe and drops a support and the whole structure collapses. Antonio tells him to stop thinking “like a westerner” and helps Jayden build a tipi-like hut, instead of one with four walls and a roof. 

By the time night comes, they have water, a fire, full stomachs, and a shelter, and it’s all thanks to Antonio. 

Jayden feels absolutely useless, more so than he had on the fishing boat. On the boat, he’d known that his primary function was company; Antonio liked him, liked being around him, and he had known when Antonio had asked him to come that Jayden wasn’t good at fishing or sailing. His purpose had been to keep Antonio entertained on the two week fishing excursion. Now, stranded on an island with little resources, he felt like he should at least be able to contribute. He was the Red Ranger, a trained samurai, and he couldn’t do the simplest of tasks. And then of course he thinks, both of those things were thanks to his morpher, which is currently locked in a tackle box at the bottom of the ocean. 

Was he really nothing without his symbol power? Wasn’t there anything he could do on his own merit? 

“Hey,” Antonio says from beside him, nudging his shoulder, “There appears to be a big dark cloud gathering over your head. What’s wrong?” 

Jayden looks over at him, looks back out at the crashing waves. “Nothing,” he lies, “I think I’m just tired.”

“Yeah,” Antonio agrees, and his lips go up and then down, an aborted attempt at a smile, like he doesn’t believe him, “me too. Long day.” 

“I think I’ll just try and get some rest,” Jayden says, and he stands. He considers tossing a few logs on the fire so it won’t go out overnight, but he figures Antonio will do it and think he’ll only mess it up, so he just goes to their tent-thing and lays down on top of the red blanket, the heat from the sand plenty warm. 

He hears a rustling of the fire, and then Antonio joins him. “You did really good today, Jayden,” Antonio says quietly to Jayden’s back when he lays down. 

“Don’t patronize me,” Jayden warns harshly, and then bites his tongue and reels in his tempter. 

“I wasn-” Antonio starts, but Jayden cuts him off.

“Its fine,” he says sternly, and then softens his voice so Antonio will know it isn’t him he’s had at, “Let’s just go to sleep.”

Antonio is quiet a long moment, but then he rolls over and turns away with a muttered, “okay,” and they fall asleep facing away from one another. 

***

He has a dream about Antonio holding him, about Antonio pressing a kiss to the back of his neck, but even in his dream he has trouble accepting the affection and wriggles away no matter how much he wants to stay.

***

Antonio isn’t there when he wakes in the morning. 

Jayden sits up, stretches, and then crawls out of the hut and brushes sand off himself. He looks around and sees Antonio down by the water, perched with spear in hand, obviously hunting breakfast. Jayden takes a drink of the water from the seashell, and then goes down to join him. 

“Hey,” Jayden calls, coming up to the water. 

Antonio raises a hand to his lips where he’s waist deep in the water, and Jayden wonders how he can see any of the fish with the waves crashing. 

Jayden waits and watches, sits down in the sand as the waves come up to kiss his toes before pulling back, and he watches Antonio fish. Antonio is perfectly still, totally silent, his balance impeccable even as the waves splash him back and forth. His feet must be buried in the sand, and Jayden wonder’s how long he’s been there. When he moves it’s swift and graceful, the spear coming down into the water and hoisted out quickly, a large fish on the end of it. Antonio cheers, gives Jayden a happy smile. 

Jayden applauds. 

“That’s the first one I’ve caught all morning,” Antonio tells him, sloshing forward out of the water towards him, “You must be my good luck charm.”

Jayden stands, follows Antonio back to the fire. “I’m sorry about yesterday,” Jayden says, running his fingers over his scabbed thumb, “I didn’t mean to seem ungrateful.” 

Antonio plops the fish on a stick and sets it to the fire. Then he looks up at Jayden, his eyes squinting in the sun and his lips curled. “You’re strange, Jay,” he says, before holding out a hand for Jayden to help him up. Jayden pulls him to his feet, and Antonio presses forward, touches their heads together before brushing his lips gently against Jayden’s, like it’s the easiest thing in the world. 

Jayden freezes at the contact, his flight or fight reflexes trying to make up their mind. His first thought is that this isn’t the first time Antonio has done this. It’s happened once before, just after their last battle as Rangers. Antonio had wrapped an arm around his shoulders, and twisted his head to quickly press their lips together. Jayden hadn’t had the time to contemplate it right then, because they’d been celebrating, and Mike and Kevin had lifted him onto their shoulders and away from Antonio a moment later, and Emily and Antonio had held hands and spun around in a circle. Things had happened so quickly then… he had decided not to think anything of it, especially when Antonio had pressed kisses to both of Lauren’s cheeks a few moments later. He was just happy, Jayden had rationalized, that was all. 

But now… now Antonio pulls back with a little grin, his cheeks blushing slightly even in the bright sunlight, and Jayden doesn’t know what to do. He’s never kissed anyone before, never had the opportunity or the desire. And now Antonio has kissed him twice and his heart is beating too fast and he feels sick to his stomach. 

Antonio’s face falls as he watches him, and Jayden can tell he isn’t having the right reaction to this at all. 

“Jayden,” Antonio says quickly, the hand on his shoulder tightening. 

It snaps Jayden’s body into action, and he steps backwards a few steps, until he steps on something and his foot is wet. He looks down in his haste and sees the shell with drinking water in it has tipped over. 

_An escape_ , his brain practically screams at him, and he’s bending over clumsily to pick it up on instinct. “I’ll go get us some more,” he manages to get out before he turns and, breathing fast, jogs into the island forest. 

Antonio doesn’t follow him. 

***

Jayden collapses at the pond, having followed the markings Antonio made on the trees at breakneck speed. He drops the shell, falls down on the cool ground and lies on his back, staring up at the sun through the leaves. 

“Shit,” he says quietly, and then, louder, “Shit!” 

Some birds scramble out of the trees around him. It does feel good, he thinks belatedly, to be able to curse without immediately being reprimanded or judged. Mike would be proud. Mia would look smug. Emily would be all wide eyed innocence, pretending she’s never let the f-bomb drop in frustration which Jayden knows isn’t true. Kevin would cross his arms and look incredibly disapproving. And Antonio… Antonio would probably laugh, Jayden thinks. 

He brings a hand up to his face, presses against his tired eyes. He is both disappointed and annoyed with himself for running away. Which is exactly what he did. He’d been faced with a problem, something he’d known about for a long time, something he should have seen coming from a long ways away, and he’d turned tail and run away like a coward. 

Jayden has never run from a fight before. Ever. 

Jayden Shiba, leader of the Samurai rangers, and he’s more terrified of kissing a boy than he ever was of any Nighlock. 

Jayden sighs and sits up, and he drinks from the water in the pond and washes his face off. It does nothing to clear his head. 

A thought strikes him, as he repeats the previous reprimand about running away in his mind, and he sits back, considers. He’s never run from a fight, but this wasn’t a fight, was it? Running away from Antonio wasn’t driven by the same emotions running away from a fight way. Running away from a fight was for survival, for fear of losing, to protect others. 

What was running from Antonio, if not the very opposite? 

He’s known for a long time, he thinks, about Antonio’s feelings for him. Antonio had never made any effort to hide it. When they were children, it hadn’t seemed out of place. When they were rangers, Jayden had been able to dismiss it because of his responsibilities and secrets. 

Now they’re grown up, and they’re not rangers anymore, and Antonio’s feelings are still there, as clear as ever. But what about Jayden’s feelings? After all, he wasn’t really the red ranger anymore, and Lauren was safe and the head of the Shiba clan… and he was allowed to have feelings now. 

Jayden really should have thought about all this before now. 

He sits by the pond for a long time. So long that he thinks it must be late afternoon by the time he gets to his feet and fills the shell with water and steels himself to go back to the campsite. He can’t stay any longer, because is just rude to keep Antonio away from the fresh water, and he knows Antonio won’t chance coming to find him even if he is thirsty, not with the way Jayden had run away. 

He has no idea what he’s going to say or do, no idea where to go from here, but he can’t sit around and do nothing all day. 

And he’s really hungry, so there’s that, too. 

***

Antonio has been nervous fishing. 

He’s made a little pile of the large palm-like leaves on the ground, and he’s been laying fish out on them. There’s a pile there, more than they could ever eat in one day, and they’ve no way to keep them from going bad here. But he’s down at the water still, standing with the spear and jabbing it in the water while he mutters to himself. 

Jayden sets the shell with water down and heads down to the shoreline to stop him before he overfishs their campsite and accidentally starves them to death. 

Antonio is muttering to himself quietly in Spanish, and Jayden regrets not knowing the language, because his mutterings sound frantic and annoyed and sorrowful, and Jayden wishes he could hear what he was saying so he had a better idea of where Antonio’s head was. 

Antonio doesn’t seem to be making much of an effort to fish, anymore, because he’s splashing around and aiming the spear at the water halfheartedly. Jayden imagines the fish have all gone, at least the ones that haven’t been caught already. 

“Don’t you think we have enough?” Jayden asks, dipping his feet in the water. 

Antonio jumps at the sound of Jayden’s voice, and then he loses his footing and falls down into the surf. 

“Antonio!” Jayden says, and he rushes forward, fighting the grin that’s trying to come over his face as Antonio sputters in the waist deep water. 

Jayden reaches down, hooks an arm around Antonio and helps him back up, even as Antonio is spitting out salt water and looking embarrassed. His eyes catch Jayden’s, and he looks so worried that Jayden’s stomach drops. He suddenly feels very guilty for staying away all afternoon. 

“Are you okay?” Jayden asks, letting him go. 

Antonio nods, brings a wet hand up to wipe his hair back away from his face and wipe at his lips. “Mortified,” Antonio says, and then quickly followed with another few words in Spanish, “Which means ‘like an electric eel in a pond of catfish’,” Antonio says, and now Jayden does smile. 

“Why would an electric eel be embarrassed around catfish?” Jayden wonders, helping Antonio out of the water and back onto the beach. 

Antonio considers this. “I don’t know,” he admits, “But I’ll ask my Abuelita the next time I see her.” 

Jayden grins, reaches down to brush the water and sand off his own legs as they stand together by the water. 

Antonio watches him. “Are you…” he starts, and then trails off. Jayden raises an eyebrow. “Okay?” Antonio finishes, and there’s so much in that word that for a moment Jayden doesn’t know how to answer. 

“Yes,” he says, nodding carefully, watching Antonio’s eyes, “We’re okay.” 

Antonio’s shoulders fall, like he’s been holding his breath, and while he doesn’t smile or show it, it’s clear he understands. His relief washes over Jayden like a storm. 

And then he changes directions and they don’t talk about it at all. 

“Are you hungry?” Antonio asks, pointing to the pile of fish. “You didn’t eat breakfast.” 

“Starved,” Jayden admits, and they walk back up to the fire together. Antonio has used his spear to sharpen some longer sticks for roasting the fish, and he’s found some melon like fruit from one of the trees he got the leaves from, and they roast the fish and split open the melons. “You’ve been busy,” Jayden remarks, looking over everything. Jayden gives Antonio a half grin, and says, “I got us some water.” 

Antonio looks over at him and he grins too, because it’s funny. They stare at each other for a minute, both grinning, and then Antonio giggles, and they both giggle, and things are okay. 

Antonio drinks most of the water, but the melons are ripe enough that Jayden isn’t thirsty, and they eat until they’re stuffed and still have more than enough fish left over. 

Antonio pulls some more leaves down and covers the fish up so they won’t draw any scavenging birds, at least for the evening, and then they walk back to the pond to get more water. 

“I’ve been thinking,” Antonio says, as they walk, “About trying to make some rope out of braided tree bark, to hang some leaves over our shelter, to keep it cooler.” 

“Sure,” Jayden agrees, stepping over the thorny bushes, completely uncertain what making bark rope would involve, and also not caring because Antonio will know and Jayden will learn from him. Antonio is behind him, and Jayden hears his shorts catch on the bushes, and Antonio stumbles. On instinct Jayden turns and holds out his hand, catching Antonio’s in his to steady him. 

Antonio gets his shorts free and looks at Jayden, his eyes wide. Jayden hasn’t let go of his hand, and his stomach does the funny little thing that Antonio makes it do, and he thinks he should do it, he should just lean forward and kiss him. Antonio obviously wants him to, and Jayden thinks he might want to, but he… he isn’t any good at all of this, and he wishes Antonio would take the lead again, give Jayden another chance at it now that he’s had time to recover. 

But Antonio pulls his hand away after a moment and steps away, averting his eyes, and Jayden knows that isn’t going to happen after this morning. Antonio will probably never kiss him again. 

He opens his mouth to say something at the same time Antonio blurts out, “I’m sorry I kissed you this morning.” 

Jayden closes his mouth, uncertain. “You are?” 

Antonio looks back up at him, shrugs. “I mean, I thought that you, that I,” Antonio stumbles, then gestures between them. He drops his hand. “It doesn’t matter. I just don’t want you to hate me because of it.” 

Jayden frowns. “I could never hate you,” he says, struck by how true it is, “Never, Antonio. Especially not for something like kissing me. You just… caught me off guard.” 

Antonio watches him, tilts his head slightly. “I didn’t mean to. I mean,” and Antonio chews his lips, looks at a loss for words, “I thought that you knew, sort of, everything. About me.” 

“I did,” Jayden admits quietly, “I think. I don’t want you to be sorry for kissing me,” he continues, a little lump of uncertainty rising in his throat, “I’m just sorry I reacted badly.” 

Antonio narrows his eyes, like he thinks he might know what that means but isn’t sure, and Jayden doesn’t know how to clarify it anymore for him. Jayden shrugs, gives Antonio an uncertain smile, and turns to get water from the pond. It takes Antonio a minute, but he joins him, and they sit there in the shade and drink while their food digests, and Jayden waves at a bug buzzing around them. 

He finds Antonio watching him after a little while. He stares back. 

“I’m just trying to figure out,” Antonio says to the quiet clearing, “When it was I first thought we were on the same page about this.” 

Jayden frowns. “What do you mean?” 

Antonio pulls his legs up and wraps his arms around them. “I didn’t think I was subtle about it, you know? And there was the other time, right after the battle with Xandred-”

“I remember,” Jayden tells him, which makes Antonio’s eyebrows go up. 

“Then why was today different?” He wonders, so quiet Jayden almost can’t hear despite how close they’re sitting, like he’s afraid of the answer. 

Jayden looks down, picks at the grass and twigs on the ground. “You kissed Lauren, too, that day,” Jayden says with a shrug, and he sees Antonio throw his head back out of the corner of his eye. “I guess I just convinced myself it didn’t,” he hesitates, because he doesn’t want to say it doesn’t matter, “that it wasn’t important,” he tries, and that sounds wrong too and he winces. 

“For your information,” Antonio says, still looking upwards, “Kissing on the lips is romantic. Kisses on the cheeks, like I kissed Lauren, that’s how I’d kiss my sister, if I had one.” 

Jayden looks up at him, and Antonio is still sitting with his head tipped back, but he’s smiling, and Jayden thinks he’s embarrassed again, but he’s still focused on what Antonio has just implied. That he considers Lauren his sister, because she’s Jayden’s sister. That he cares about Jayden that much…

Jayden manages to suck in a breath, shrugs helplessly. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” he says, “But I’m actually not that good at… stuff. Like this.” 

Antonio finally let’s his head fall back, and he’s grinning with raises eyebrows, as if to say, ‘you think’? 

Jayden picks a small pebble up and tosses it at him, which makes Antonio smile. 

“I’m sorry, Jay,” Antonio says again, his voice serious, “I think I just… I wanted it so badly that I convinced myself that you felt the same way I did, and I almost ruined our friendship. I won’t do it again.” 

Jayden frowns as Antonio stands and fills the shell, like its final, that’s it, discussion over. He wants to object, opens his mouth and closes it, isn’t sure what to say. “I didn’t,” he says, scrambling to his feet, and then he hesitates. “That’s not,” he says again, and Antonio turns to him questioningly. “Don’t say that,” he settles on, and Antonio’s face does something funny. 

Jayden tries to think what normal people would do in a situation like this. And then of course, he remembers he doesn’t know any normal people and every single one of his friends is emotionally stunted in different ways and he has nothing for comparison, and he sighs. 

“I have no idea what I’m doing,” Jayden warns Antonio, and then he leans forward and presses his lips against Antonio’s. 

The hand of Antonio’s holding the shell goes slack at the contact, and he spills water down Jayden’s calf. It makes Jayden break away momentarily, uncertain, but Antonio drops the shell and brings his hand up to Jayden’s neck, stepping closer to him, renewing the pressure against his lips. 

Jayden has _no idea_ what to do with his hands, so he just reaches out blindly and settles them on Antonio’s sides, and Antonio’s other hand comes up to hold Jayden’s shoulder. Antonio parts his lips slightly, turns his head, and Jayden leans into it, let’s Antonio lead, let’s Antonio pull him closer, and he has his eyes closed but he opens them just slightly to look at Antonio, who is so close and who emits this happy little sound that vibrates to Jayden’s mouth. Jayden closes his eyes again and loses himself in the kiss, which turns into two kisses, and then three. 

And God, he thinks, how did he ever convince himself that Antonio kissing him hadn’t meant anything? 

Antonio pulls away and dips his head slightly so their noses brush. Jayden concentrates on his harsh breathing, trying to even it before he lets Antonio go and opens his eyes. He feels the amused puff of air escape Antonio’s lips, and his own crack into a smile as he opens his eyes and see’s Antonio smiling back. 

“For not being very good at this stuff,” Antonio says, breathlessly, “That was… very adequate.” 

Jayden laughs, which makes Antonio laugh, and they stand there with their foreheads pressed together gently in the cooling jungle, Antonio’s thumb gently brushing Jayden’s jaw. 

Antonio clears his throat after a while. “We should probably, uh, get back to the shore before it starts to get dark.” 

Jayden hums agreement, and Antonio pulls away. 

He bends down to pick up the shell and refill it with water, and then he leads the way back out of the clearing. At some point, Jayden ends up beside him, and Antonio’s fingers brush his. Its instinct that makes him reach out and grab onto Antonio’s hand and entwine their fingers together. It seems to be the right thing to do, though, because Antonio squeezes his hand and smiles, and they hold hands all the way back to their camp. 

***

They end up moving the fish they can’t finish to the other side of the beach, leaving it for the birds. They stick pieces of melon on sticks and roast it over the fire until it caramelizes, giving it a sugary taste. They sit in the sand next to the fire, eating the candied melon pieces and looking at the stars in the uncommonly clear sky. 

“I wonder what kind of melon this is,” Jayden says, munching another piece. 

“It’s probably a kind of mango,” Antonio says, “But just one we don’t have back in the states. We should take some back with us, plant it, make a fortune,” Antonio teases, and then he points, “Oh, shooting star!” 

“Actually, it’s a piece of debris or space rock burning up in our atmosphere,” Jayden says without thinking about it, “Stars are stationary.” 

Antonio stays quiet, and after a moment, Jayden looks over at him to see he’s being glared at. 

Jayden raises his eyebrows. “Or,” he amends carefully, smirking, “It’s a shooting star.” 

Antonio shakes his head, eats more of the dessert melon and lies back to watch the ‘shooting stars’. 

Jayden joins him, laying his head down next to Antonio’s. 

Antonio twists to look at him. “Do you remember the time I convinced you to use your symbol power to paint the west outer wall of the gates for me? And we took my fish stencils and drew an underwater mural on them?”

Jayden squeezes his eyes shut. “Oh god, Ji was _furious_ , and we had to scrub the whole wall off by hand afterward.” Antonio laughs, but Jayden rubs his hands over his face at the memory. “It took two whole days, Antonio, my fingers were raw.” 

“Yeah,” Antonio agrees, still chuckling, “But before that, before he caught us, when it was just you and me drawing on the wall and having fun,” he pauses, twists more so that he’s laying on his side, and then he reaches out and puts his hand on Jayden’s shoulder, “That’s how I feel right now.” 

Jayden grins. “Like you’re doing something you know you’ll get in trouble for?” He asks, and Antonio laughs. 

“No,” he objects, shoving Jayden’s shoulder lightly, “Happy, just happy.” 

Jayden smiles, but then his face falls as he thinks back to the memory. “I knew, I knew the whole time we were doing it that we were going to get caught and get in trouble. I was so nervous, and when Ji finally came around the corner I was relieved. It was not as much fun for me as it was for you,” he admits. 

Antonio makes a face. “Then why did you agree to do it?” 

Jayden shrugs, feeling the sand beneath him move. “You wanted to, and I knew that you wouldn’t desert me when we did eventually get caught. I actually think I had more fun cleaning the wall the next two days, remember, because he had forbidden us from talking to one another, so we kept trying to furtively communicate by washing the paint away to spell things,” Jayden reminds him, and Antonio wrinkles his nose, laughs again. “And Ji kept correcting my spelling.” 

Antonio hums. “I guess we remember things a little differently,” he muses, looking back out at the sky, “I remember getting us into trouble, and you remember getting us out of it.” 

***

In the morning, they have leftover fruit for breakfast and then Antonio leads Jayden through the jungle, looking for trees with the right kind of bark to pull off in long strips. They collect a heap of it, and then Antonio makes it into rope while Jayden climbs some of the trees and pulls down big, heavy green leaves. 

When he brings a pile over to where Antonio is sitting in the shade, he sits down next to him and gets rewarded with a kiss on the cheek. 

“Wait a minute,” Jayden says, pulling a leaf over, “I thought kisses on the cheek were platonic?” 

Antonio laughs. “Double kisses, like how I kissed Lauren, yes,” he says, still working the drying bark, “But just one, like that, no.” 

Jayden frowns. “I think you’re making up the rules,” he argues, watches Antonio’s hand falter. “How are two kisses less romantic than one?” 

Antonio just grins down at where he’s working. “Help me with this,” he says, his eyes glinting with mischief, “And I’ll school you on romantic actions for the rest of the afternoon.”

Jayden blushes, but he cooperates without much other commentary. 

They hang a bunch of leaves over their tipi-like shelter, which shades it and makes it sort of blend in with the jungle behind. Jayden actually has to go back into the jungle to get a few more, and when Antonio is satisfied they drink what’s left of their water and then Antonio insists they ‘try it out’. 

The way the sticks fall makes it just barely tall enough for them to stand in. But Jayden has to admit that Antonio has done a good job putting it together, and he’s wondering what else they’re going to busy their time with now that all the survival necessities are complete and improved. 

But then Antonio comes over to him, and he puts both hands on Jayden’s face and draws him in close. 

“Lesson one,” Antonio says quietly, and he presses his lips lightly against Jayden’s, “That is a peck. It’s quick, it’s easy, and it can go either way. You can kiss just about anyone like that with the right attitude.” 

Jayden grins, and he nods. “Okay.” 

“This,” Antonio demonstrates the double kiss he’d given Lauren, “Is a greeting or celebratory kiss, supposedly originating in France. It’s familial, close friends can use it, and there’s a stereotype about gay guys doing it a lot, which I suppose I’m adding to but,” Antonio rattles off what must be something like ‘oh well’ in Spanish and moves on. “And this,” and Antonio leans in close to Jayden’s cheek, presses his lips there gently, just enough to feel the pressure before he pulls away, and his nose brushes Jayden’s cheek as he pulls away, “Is not what I would call platonic in nature.” 

Jayden’s stomach does a funny flop, and he swallows and nods. “Okay,” he repeats. 

Antonio grins at him, and then he looks down, reaches for Jayden’s hand. He demonstrates two ways of holding it, one where the fingers are entwined, and one where they aren’t. “Romantic, platonic,” he says, demonstrating each again with the accompanying description. Jayden wonder’s what the difference is, but is somewhat gratified to know he’d gotten that one right. 

“Hugging,” Antonio announces, and he takes a step back, “There are actually three kinds. There’s the acquaintance hug,” Antonio laughs, and he leans forward and puts his arms quickly around Jayden and gives him a hard smack on the back, “In which most of the body doesn’t actually touch,” and he pulls back, grinning. “Then there’s the good friends hug, which is basically how the girls hug us all the time,” and he demonstrates that one too. There’s a tight squeeze that goes with it, which feels very much like how Emily often latches onto them. Antonio pulls back again. “And then, the romantic,” Antonio steps closer, brings his arms up around Jayden’s shoulders gently, and pulls him close, their cheeks touching, “Which tends to uh, linger, for a bit.” 

Jayden closes his eyes and brings his hands up to encircle Antonio’s back, and he feels Antonio sigh into his shoulder. 

“You’re a fast learner, Mi Amour,” he mumbles, and Jayden knows what those words mean. His heart does something fluttery, and he has to remind himself to take a deep breath. Antonio turns his head slightly, until his forehead is against the side of Jayden’s face, and Jayden has to take a moment to brace himself before he turns his own head and lets Antonio kiss him in the most un-platonic way he knows of. 

There’s… lots of movement, and Jayden tries to go with the flow, to stay in sync with Antonio as their lips move gently across one another’s, as Antonio’s hand comes up to hold onto the back of Jayden’s neck in a way that makes his spine tingle, and he lets his own hand travel up Antonio’s back and grip the soft, thin fabric of his tank top. 

Antonio starts to pulls away, to end it with a few quicker kisses, but Jayden doesn’t let him for a moment, keeps Antonio close and breathless, and Antonio’s hand grips Jayden’s shoulder like he’s completely lost. 

When they do break apart, Antonio lets out a slow breath, like he’s trying to slow his heart down, and it makes Jayden smile. 

“And that one,” Antonio starts, and Jayden interrupts. 

“I think I know which kind that one is,” he whispers, letting Antonio’s head fall back against his own, and they both grin widely as they stand there holding each other. 

Even in the shade it’s warm, and Jayden would be lying if he said that kissing Antonio didn’t make him almost uncomfortably hot. It makes his skin tingle, the way Antonio’s fingertips trailed over his neck, the way Antonio breathes on his neck just before. It’s the only reason he lets Antonio pull away from him to go get water, and Jayden lays down on their red blanket over the sand, covering his eyes with his arm in a lazy, blissed out way. 

“Hey,” Antonio’s voice comes back, and Jayden lifts his arm, “We’re out of water. I’m going to go get more, okay? You stay here and rest,” Antonio instructs, and he bends down to briefly touch his lips to Jayden’s in a peck. 

Jayden decides not to argue, and he nods and brings his arm back over his eyes as he hears Antonio walk off. 

He must doze off, because he comes to with a start as a large gust of wind blows across him, making the leaves over their shelter flap wildly. Jayden sits up, rubs at his eyes, and then exits the shelter. 

His heart sinks. The sky has gone from bright and sunny to dark and ominous, with the wind breaking across the beach with tremendous force, and the waves crashing against the shore violently. Sand blows across the beach with the wind, hitting his skin and feeling like bullets. The storm had come out of nowhere, just like the one that had sunk their boat and stranded them here, and Jayden begins to panic. How long had he been passed out? And where was Antonio? 

“Antonio?” Jayden calls back into the jungle, and rain starts to come down around him in sheets. Jayden waits all of two second before starting into the jungle to find him. 

It’s wet, even through the thick trees, and the ground gets slick beneath his feet. The cover over top is blowing violently with the wind, and the rain is making it difficult to see. It’s cold now, too, and Jayden thinks too late about the fire on the beach, which must be nothing but smoldering embers now. 

He decides to worry about it later. The most important thing is finding Antonio, and finding some place to ride out the storm. They could recoup when it was over, restart the fire. It wasn’t the end of the world. But if something happens to Antonio because Jayden wasn’t there… he swallows, calls out Antonio’s name again, but his voice gets lost in the howling of the wind. 

He hears a crash, and he runs in that direction. He slips, falls, cuts his hand open on something, but he gets back up and calls out Antonio’s name again. “Antonio!” he repeats, frantic now. Why wasn’t Antonio answering? 

He finds himself near the pond, which is overflowing thanks to the fresh rain water, and he looks for the trees, for the marks, but everything is dark because of the storm, and the water has soaked the trees, making Antonio’s marks impossible to make out. 

“Antonio!” Jayden yells, and he waits. He starts walking in the direction he thinks the beach is when he hears someone yelling. He turns, waits, calls out, “Antonio!” again. 

He thinks he hears his name, but it’s impossible to tell what direction it’s coming from. Antonio is calling him, and Jayden can’t tell which way to go to get to him. It’s like playing a frantic, frustrating, life or death game of Marco Polo. 

Jayden closes his eyes and takes a breath, even as the water pelts down on him and the wind burns his face. He focuses in on his listening, on putting his well honed Samurai skills to use for the first time since they were stranded here, and he just listens. He closes every other sense out, even the frantic beating of his heart, and he focuses in on Antonio’s voice. 

“Jayden!” Antonio’s voice comes in his right ear, clear as day, and Jayden’s eyes shoot open and he sprints in that direction, homing in on Antonio. 

His heart catches in his throat when he finds him. 

“Jay,” Antonio says, from beneath the large, fallen tree he is pinned under. It’s one of the heavy, tall trees, the ones that formed the upper covering, that looked like they could break down a door but had weak roots in the sandy ground, the kind that had no right to be growing on an island in the middle of nowhere. Jayden rushes down to Antonio and takes his hand, squeezing it tightly as he assesses the situation and tries to stay calm. “I can’t move it,” Antonio tells him, his voice pained, “It’s too heavy.” 

Antonio sucks in a breath, hard, like he’s having trouble, and Jayden has no doubt that he is. The tree is practically crushing his upper chest, and the only reason his hands are free is probably because he used them to block his face defensively. 

“Okay,” Jayden says, in pure reaction mode now, “Okay, we’re gonna get you out of here, just try and stay calm.” 

“Hurry, Jay,” Antonio pleads, and Jayden gives Antonio’s hand one more squeeze before he rushes to action. Because he might be useless when it comes to being a regular human being, to relationships and everyday survival, but this, _this_ , saving people. This is what he does. This is what he’s good at. He can save Antonio, he can get them out of this. He’ll be damned if he’s going to fail at the one thing he knows how to do. 

He goes around the fallen tree to see how much of Antonio is pinned. It’s just over his midsection, and Jayden has a brief worry about how injured Antonio might be, but he puts it out of his mind. 

He puts his hands under the tree, and it’s far too heavy to push off. Jayden thinks, and finally he looks over the log at Antonio. “I’m not going far,” he promises, and he sees fear in Antonio’s eyes, “Just keep breathing, okay?” 

And he darts away, looking for a rock and any other large piece of wood. 

He finds the wood first, a long, thick stick like the ones they’d used on the shelter. Which is probably in pieces now, Jayden thinks, but he hurries onward. It takes far too long to find a suitable rock, but he hefts it up when he does and sprints back to Antonio, all of his muscles complaining from atrophy. 

“Antonio,” Jayden says, and Antonio opens his eyes, and he looks relieved, “How much can you move?” 

“I can move,” he supplies, nodding. 

“I’m going to leverage this tree up, and then you have to push yourself out, alright?” Jayden tells him, putting the rock and stick into position right next to Antonio. 

Antonio closes his eyes and says something in Spanish in a hushed whisper, and then he looks back at Jayden. “I’m terrified,” he says, “But I trust you.” 

Jayden nods, and he gives Antonio one last look before he starts leveraging the large tree up. It’s heavy, even with the leverage, and Jayden breaks the stick on his first try, before Antonio get’s free at all. He repositions with his shorter stick, and he tries again. 

Antonio cries out as the tree lifts, either from the rush of blood to his injuries or the release of pressure, and Jayden pushes harder. 

“A little more!” Antonio says, pushing his hands into the ground beside him as he tries to scoot backwards, and Jayden grunts, pushes the tree up another inch. 

Antonio starts sliding out, and Jayden feels like he is going to explode from holding the pressure of the tree up, but he waits until Antonio turns, slides his legs out completely and is away before he drops the tree down and falls to his knees beside Antonio. 

The rain is still coming down, but he crawls over to Antonio and puts his hands on him, goes to where Antonio is cradling his ribs, and he clenches his jaw. 

“I’m okay,” Antonio promises, lying on his side, and he coughs, “I’m okay, I’m okay, thank you.” 

Jayden holds onto him, let’s his own breathing steady, but then a gust of wind shoots up and he hears another crash off in the distance. “It isn’t safe,” he tells Antonio, who nods. “Can you walk?” 

Antonio looks like he wants to say yes, but he shakes his head and says, “Give me a minute, maybe.” 

“No time,” Jayden tells him, and he puts his arm under Antonio’s legs, and another just above his bruised torso, “Hold onto me.” 

Antonio does as he’s told, though he looks pained to raise his arms up to encircle Jayden’s neck, and then Jayden hoists him up despite Antonio’s small noise of pain, and carries him out of the greenery and back onto the beach. 

He’s amazed to find their shelter still standing, though many of the leaves they’d applied that morning have blown off, and he rushes Antonio to it. 

He sets Antonio down on the somewhat dry sand and retrieves the red blanket from its place against the wall, and he wraps Antonio in it. He can’t assess his injury while it’s still insane outside, and so he gets behind Antonio and pulls him against his chest. 

Antonio winces, but relaxes as Jayden cradles him, covered in the blanket. 

“It’s not that bad,” Antonio promises again, finding Jayden’s hand and holding onto it. “It’s probably just some broken ribs,” he adds a moment later, and Jayden wants to curse again. “If it’s anything more than that-”

“Shh,” Jayden hushes him, buries his head in Antonio’s hair. “Its fine,” he says in the most authoritative voice he can manage, “And you’re going to be fine.” 

Antonio doesn’t answer, but maybe that’s because he knows it’s not just him Jayden’s talking to. There had been a time where Jayden’s commands had meant something. He had commanded the Samurai Rangers, had been able to change the fate of the world and his own fate by sheer force of will. The universe had listened to him once. 

Maybe, if he commanded it strongly enough, it would listen again. 

***

It takes the storm hours to die down. 

Antonio dozes in his arms between trying to reassure Jayden that his injuries are minor and squirming in pain. When the rain stops and the wind dies down, it’s late afternoon, and there’s just enough light for Jayden to lay Antonio down and peel his sweat and rain soaked shirt up and looks at the gruesome purple and black bruise that covers his torso. 

Antonio watches his face as Jayden inspects his injuries, and Jayden is careful to keep it perfectly calm. He gently presses his fingers to Antonio’s skin around the edges, and Antonio hisses at the contact. Jayden presses on, moving his fingers just enough to feel for splinters of bone or pockets of blood. 

Several of Antonio’s ribs are broken. The bruise, while awful and angry looking, doesn’t seem to be caused by blood pooling under the skin, which means that Antonio probably isn’t bleeding internally, but there just isn’t any way to tell. 

Jayden puts his hand over Antonio’s broken ribs. “Can you cough?” 

Antonio looks at him like he’s crazy.

“Please,” Jayden says, and feels a pang of guilt as Antonio sucks in a breath and coughs it out with a wince, followed by a pained groan. 

“Yeah,” Antonio says weakly, “Those are definitely broken.” 

Jayden removes his hand, pulls Antonio’s shirt back down gently over his chest. “Does it hurt anywhere else?” 

Antonio shakes his head softly. “That’s the side it fell on, impacted,” he says, closing his eyes and swallowing, “everything else is sore from being pinned, but nothing else hurts.”

Jayden nods, sits back on his heels. “You need to keep breathing as deeply as possible, Antonio. Even if it hurts. And try to cough, too. If something,” Jayden hesitates, afraid of the words, wishing he had paid better attention when Ji had bandaged them up after every fight, “If there was something else wrong, I think you’d be sicker by now.”

Antonio nods, reaches over with his hand and rests it on Jayden’s arm. “So much for our week in paradise,” he says quietly, with a pained grin. “I’m sorry I ruined it.”

“Antonio,” Jayden reprimands, placing his hand over Antonio’s, “I’m just glad you’re okay. If anything happened to you…” And he doesn’t know what else to say, so he just squeezes Antonio’s hand. 

“Don’t get mushy on me,” Antonio orders, smiling, “I can’t properly reciprocate in my current condition.” 

Jayden grins at him. He tries to make Antonio comfortable, helps him move around gently so he can lay on the blanket and be covered by it, and then he goes out of their hut to check to damage. 

The beach looks no different than when they arrived. Which… is disappointing, really, because the storm has washed away everything. Their fire is not only out, but gone. The wood they had collected is strewn across the stretch of shoreline, and the jungle looks no more ominous than it did when they arrived. The only thing that remains is their shelter, with its sticks stuck into the ground and the leaves tied on top of it. 

Jayden looks around, but he can’t find Antonio’s spear anywhere. He wonders how much dental floss they have left and if he’ll be able to make another, because he can’t fish without it. Then he thinks about fishing, and his heart sinks a bit. He was really terrible at fishing, even the normal way. How was he supposed to catch fish with a spear? But it doesn’t matter at the moment, because all the wood on the island is soaked, and he’ll never be able to start a fire with it, so even if he could manage to catch some fish, they couldn’t eat them. 

He’s suddenly glad for the can of chicken broth safe in the hut, because even if it’s cold, at least he’ll be able to get Antonio something tonight. 

He starts to feel overwhelmed as he thinks of all that he has to do on his own, now. When he and Antonio had been working together, it had seemed easy. Antonio had made it seem easy. Now that Antonio was injured, Jayden would have to do it all and look after Antonio. 

And, he thinks belatedly, they’d only been here for three days. That meant they had at least six to go. 

“Jay,” Antonio calls from the hut, and Jayden rushes back to it without thinking. 

“What’s wrong?” He asks, quickly kneeling down beside Antonio. 

Antonio smirks. “I can feel you brooding out there,” Antonio tells him, and Jayden tries not to sigh at him for making him worry, “You’re thinking too much. Look, just,” Antonio says, gesturing half heartedly, “Do what I do. Take it one step at a time. Solve the first problem you see, and don’t think about anything else until that one is done.” 

Jayden thinks that sounds a lot easier than it will be to do, but he just nods at Antonio. “It’ll be fine,” he promises, he hopes. 

“One problem at a time,” Antonio repeats, “And every time you finish something you can come back here for a reward, okay?” 

Jayden half smiles. “Reward?” 

Antonio’s eyes twinkle at him. “Including but not limited to romantic displays of my affection.”

***

Jayden tries to be like Antonio. 

It’s harder than it seems, but he thinks he does an okay job. He tackles the most pressing things, like food and water first. The shell is gone, but Jayden remembers the bottle of sunscreen and has an epiphany. He dumps it out over on the rocky cliffs, and then washes it out in the ocean to get rid of all the sunscreen. Then he takes it to the freshwater pond and rinses it again, until it’s perfectly clean. 

He fills it with water and takes a drink, and it’s just like a water bottle. He can’t believe they didn’t think of this before. 

Antonio is impressed. Jayden get’s a full kiss for that one. 

Then he goes looking for more of the melons Antonio had found, and he figures between that and the chicken broth they’ll have dinner for tonight. He finds a sharp rock for a new spear, and then he lays out a bunch of wet firewood across the beach to dry in tomorrow’s morning sun. 

When he gets back to the hut, he feeds Antonio pieces of melon, makes him cough, they share the chicken broth with identical looks of distaste, and then they lay in the darkness. 

Antonio finds the cut on Jayden’s hand that he’d forgotten about, and he kisses it, over and over, holds Jayden’s hand to his face. 

Antonio hums Spanish lullabies at him until he drifts off to sleep.

***

Antonio gets worse. 

Jayden wakes up to Antonio coughing, and he rolls onto his side, hacking into his hand. Jayden rubs at his back, wishing he could take the pain away. 

By morning, he has a fever. 

Something is wrong. Jayden isn’t sure what, but he knows this isn’t good. Antonio’s injuries are more serious than he had hoped, and he doesn’t know what to do to help him. 

Jayden rips off part of his red t-shirt, uses the water to wet it and place it on Antonio’s forehead. He tries to keep him drinking water, but it doesn’t seem to do much good. 

Jayden paces outside the hut while Antonio sleeps. He should go get them more water, start building the fire, but he’s afraid to go too far in case Antonio needs him. 

He does go for more water, eventually, because Antonio needs the water more than he needs Jayden right now. He tries to make Antonio eat some more melon, but he pushes Jayden’s hand away and shakes his head. 

He complains about the pain, and Jayden tries to distract him from it by petting his hair, telling him stories. 

They pass the day that way, with Antonio growing more and more uncomfortable. He doesn’t get them anymore food; Antonio is getting too sick to eat it, and Jayden is too worried to eat. 

Jayden hardly sleeps that night. 

The next morning, Antonio coughs up blood, and his bruise darkens. 

“Jay,” Antonio tells him while Jayden sits by his side, holding his hand, “Whatever happens, I’m really glad that you’re here with me.” 

Jayden sets his jaw, because they aren’t going to do this. They aren’t going to get sappy and they aren’t going to start saying goodbye. 

Jayden reaches down, kisses Antonio’s forehead, then his lips, and he says, “You’re going to be fine, Antonio. Just rest.” 

Antonio drifts off to sleep again, and Jayden walks down to the shore in the afternoon sun. He kicks at the surf, curses as loud as he can. He hangs his head in his hands, and chants, “Four more days, four more days.” 

Antonio might not make it four more days, and Jayden knows it. Their plan of waiting to be rescued is suddenly no longer a viable plan, and Jayden has to do something, but he doesn’t know what. 

He sits down on the beach, let’s the surf come up to him and roll away, and he tries to think of something. All he can think of, though, is Antonio’s giant black bruise and how many times Jayden has failed him. 

He can’t count the number of time he or Antonio had been hurt far worse than this when they were rangers. They’d always been able to heal, to recover with the help of the power. Only now they weren’t rangers anymore, and neither of them had used their morpher’s since defeating Master Xandred and retiring their power, and now they were locked in the-

In the tackle box, Jayden thinks with a start, looking up and out at the ocean. Their morphers were in the tackle box. 

There hadn’t been any point to trying to retrieve their morphers before, because they hadn’t really needed them, and Jayden had put them out of his mind. Only now… now he remembers that their morphers are just one or two feats of heroism away, and he stands, his heart racing. 

If he could get Antonio’s morpher, and reactivate the power… he’s seen the power knit broken bones in a day, seen it sew cuts up without a single scar. Surely it could heal Antonio’s injuries, fix his broken ribs. At the very least, it could keep him alive until help came in a few days, and that’s all Jayden needs to know. 

His mind starts racing as he tries to figure out just how far out the boat had sunk. He can still see the tip of the mast peaking out of the water. He takes off his wet, dirty shirt and runs back up to the hut to hang it there, and then he grabs one of the unopened melons and cuts into it, shoving some in his mouth. He hasn’t eaten since yesterday, and if he’s going to swim out there and fight the tides, he’s going to need some energy. 

Of course it means he has to wait a few minutes for it to kick in, for his body to metabolize it and give him strength, but the adrenaline is already pumping through his system, with one thought repeating over and over in his mind: He can save Antonio. 

He thinks quietly in the back of his mind that he could fail, again. That this might not work. He might get swept out by the tides, might drown trying to get the morphers, and then Antonio… but he shoves the thought out of his mind, because if he doesn’t do something then Antonio is going to die anyway. 

Jayden would much rather go out trying to be a hero than live the rest of his life knowing he let his best friend ( _and so much more_ , he thinks) die. 

He stops in at the hut to check on Antonio, but he doesn’t wake him. He picks up Antonio’s hand and holds it for a moment, and then, tentatively, he reaches out and puts his palm over Antonio’s softly beating heart. 

He tries to memorize the rhythm. Ba-dum-bu, ba-dum-bu, ba-dum-bu. Steady, slow. Just in case. 

Then he goes back down to the shore, and waits for the tide to start going out, to carry him out to the sunken ship where their buried treasure waits. 

***

He’s no Olympic swimmer like Kevin, but he likes to think he’s learned a few things from him. He paces himself, goes with the tides and doesn’t fight them, conserves his energy for the swim back. 

It takes him a few minutes to reach the mast with the tide going out. He grabs onto it, uses it to pull himself up and catch his breath. He wipes at his eyes, wishing he had goggles. The salt water stings his eyes, and it’s impossible to see so he knows he’s going to have to rely on other senses to help him find the tackle box. 

He takes a deep breath, and goes under, using the mast to pull himself down to the deck. He remembers belatedly how big of a fishing boat it is, and it takes him almost too long to reach the deck. He swims around, feeling with his hands and squinting with his eyes to get his bearings, but then he has to swim back up as he runs out of air. 

He tries three or four more times. Each time he comes back up, holds onto the mast and then tries again. 

On the fifth time, he finds the tackle box just before he needs to go up for air. 

This is it, he thinks as he ascends holding onto the mast, this is it. He’s going to do it! 

He swims back down, his heart racing, and he finds the tackle box again. He holds onto it, kicks down as he tries to find the latches and open them. They pop open, but the tackle box doesn’t come loose. 

Then he remembers. Antonio had locked it. With a little key he’d put in the cuddy cabin. 

He comes back up for air, curses and smacks the water. 

He doesn’t have time to look for the key, and it’s probably long gone now. He’ll have to find another way into the tackle box. Perhaps a rock to smash it open? He can’t remember what is holding it down, and he wishes he’d brought the sharp rock to cut the straps with. 

He goes back down to try again, and he picks up a chain that’s ghosting across the floor of the boat. He bunches it in his hand and hammers at the tackle box with it. 

He feels the cut on his hand pop open, and it stings, but he keeps going. 

He crushes the lock, and then he drops the chain and jiggles the lid of the box. 

A hundred different things come to mind as the lid to the tackle box pops open, but Jayden can only hear the rhythm of Antonio’s heart as he sees Antonio’s morpher, floating up before his eyes. 

He grabs it, and then looks for his own. Hooks and tackles are floating up now, too, and some come at him with the movement of the ocean. He spots his morpher, and he reaches for it, just barely grabbing onto it with his other hand before he kicks violently for the surface, his lungs feeling like they’re going to explode. 

He breaths in air at the surface and floats there for a moment, feeling triumphant. But then he looks back at the shore, and it seems much farther away than it had when he had started. 

The swim back is against the tide and the currents most of the way. He nearly gets swept away twice, but managed to come back up and keep going. 

Only the second time, when he comes back up, one of his hands is open, and he panics and looks around as he realizes he’s dropped his morpher. He grips Antonio’s tighter in his hand, and he dives under to try and grab his own morpher back. 

He dives and dives, looking, but after a few moments he realizes it’s gone, and he feels a pang of bitterness and betrayal rise up inside him. How could he have lost his morpher? He’d had it in his hand! 

But he still has Antonio’s, and that’s the most important thing. He swims frantically back to shore, racing to at least do what he had intended to do, and heal Antonio. 

He’ll mourn the loss of his morpher later. 

Jayden pulls himself out of the water tiredly, staggers up the beach, and goes into the hut where Antonio is, and smiles. 

He presses Antonio’s morpher into his hand, and says, “Antonio, wake up. Here, press anything, draw any symbol, just power it on!” 

Antonio’s eyes flutter open, and he looks at where Jayden is holding his hand up with his morpher in it and makes a face. “But how--?”

Jayden shakes his head, puts Antonio’s thumb on the activation button. “I told you it was going to be okay,” he says, as Antonio presses down on the go button, “And it is.”

***

It’s not an immediate effect. The power rushing through Antonio does help take away his pain, but he doesn’t start to heal right away. Jayden lies next to him and Antonio scolds him for going to get his morpher, but Jayden feels no shame. 

By nightfall, Antonio’s fever has broken.

***

Jayden lifts up Antonio’s shirt while he’s dozing in the darkness, and glances at his injured side in the moonlight. 

He breathes a sigh of relief, feels his chest loosen as he sees the edges of the bruise starting to yellow, see’s parts of Antonio’s skin turning lighter. The power has stopped the bleeding. 

“Verdict?” Antonio’s voice mumbles from above him, and Jayden looks up with a smile and a sigh. 

“Better,” he says, pulling the shirt down and pushing himself up to press his lips against Antonio’s, “Much better.” 

***

It’s only the next day that Antonio mentions trying to call the others to come help them now that they have a morpher. 

Jayden is taken aback, never having even considered that part of his plan. His only thought had been helping Antonio heal. 

Antonio laughs, lifts his morpher to his ear as he presses call. “Kevin, Mia, Emily, Mike,” Antonio sing-songs into the phone, “Anybody there?” 

Jayden waits. Antonio’s face falls. “Try Lauren,” Jayden suggests, and Antonio hits a different key for her. 

Lauren doesn’t answer, either. 

Jayden offers a sympathetic look. “They’ve got no reason to have their morphers on them all the time anymore.”

“Though to be honest I expected Kevin to have his,” Antonio says, closing his phone and turning his head to Jayden with a wry smirk. “We could try dialing 911. Think there’s a cell tower around here?” 

Jayden grins, because he’s far less worried now. Ji will pick up his communicator to call them when they don’t come back on time, and it’s only three days now. They’ll be fine. He lets himself smile at Antonio, let’s his worry start to melt away. 

“You know,” Antonio says, and he stretches his arm above him, “I’m starved. Did you catch any fish while you were swimming around out there?” 

Jayden rolls his eyes, but he gets up and goes to make the spear. 

“Hey, wait, come back!” Antonio calls, but Jayden ignores him. “I’m serious, carry me out of here! If you’re going to make a fool of yourself out there, I want to watch!” 

***

Jayden catches three fish (he doesn’t catch 17 other lucky ones), and it’s after and only after, when he has them roasting on a fire he’s conjured with Antonio’s morpher, that he gently picks Antonio up and carries him out of the hut to sit outside in the afternoon sun. 

Antonio’s eyelashes brush his cheek as he pulls away. 

They eat, and Antonio makes teasing comments about how long it took Jayden to catch the fish, how small they are, why there aren’t more of them. 

Jayden just grins and takes it. Antonio’s making jokes. He doesn’t care if they’re at his expense. 

Until Antonio says, “I’m just curious, did you use the right end of the spear?” 

Jayden sighs, turns his head to fix Antonio with a look. “Is this how it’s always going to be?” He wonders, taking another bite of his fish, and chewing before continuing. “You, getting us into trouble. Me, getting us out of it. You, thinking you’re funny.”

Antonio grins. “Would you want it any other way?” 

“I don’t know,” Jayden says, licking his fingers, “I think I was hoping for a bit more kissing.” 

Antonio laughs, and then clutches his side. Jayden scoots over, helps Antonio lay back down to relax his side. 

“You’re getting better,” Jayden warns, “But you’re still hurt. No overdoing it.” 

Antonio nods, brings up three fingers to salute Jayden playfully. “Yes, sir! I’ll just lay here in the sun and bask on the beach with a full stomach. It’s a hard job, but I’ll do my best.” 

Jayden reaches over and brushes Antonio’s hair back from his forehead, and Antonio opens his eyes and squints from the bright sun. Jayden moves his hand to shield him and Antonio giggles. 

“My hero,” he says, reaching up with his own hand to grab onto Jayden’s and tug it away from his face. After a moment he continues, “You are, you know. I can’t believe you swam out there by yourself for my morpher, Jay.” 

Jayden half shrugs. “I may not have been thinking very clearly in hind sight,” he teases, squeezing Antonio’s hand. “I mean, what with you sick and dying and all.” 

Antonio sighs at him, but he closes his eyes. “I’m still sorry about your morpher.” 

Jayden frowns, looks out at the surf. Maybe, he thinks, it’ll wash up before they leave, arrive at his feet like a present from the ocean for all the trouble it’s caused him. “It’s just a morpher,” Jayden says after a moment, dismissing the fleeting memory of his father pressing it into his hand, “Ji can make me another if I ever need it. There are more important things,” he adds, looking back down at Antonio, who is looking at him with a remorseful face. 

“There are,” he agrees quietly, squeezing Jayden’s hand. They’re quiet for a few minutes, and Jayden wonders if he should move Antonio back to the hut and out of the sun, to ensure his fever doesn’t come back when Antonio speaks again. “You know, before,” he says gently, his face uncertain, “The storm, the second one, this,” he gestures at his side, and Jayden nods to let him know he understands, “We didn’t really talk about what happens when we get home. We did a lot of kissing,” he teases quickly, when Jayden looks confused, “I distinctly remember the kissing and the flirting but… I mean, it’s funny, you know, I started off on this fishing trip thinking we were already in a relationship only to find out I was wrong, and now I… I’m not sure where we are.” 

Jayden looks down at their clasped hands, and considers. “Antonio, I got you out from under that tree. I swam a mile out into the open ocean to get your morpher to heal you. You’re not sure where we are?” 

Antonio looks amused, but relieved. “You’d have done that before,” he points out, and Jayden knows that’s true. He’d have done anything for Antonio, even before he had acknowledged Antonio’s feeling for him, or his feelings for Antonio. 

It makes him smile. “I would have,” he agrees easily, and he feels something warm inside himself as he says, “Which is why when we go home, things will be exactly like they were before.” 

Antonio’s face falls, like he’s misunderstood, and Jayden smiles, leans down to kiss him sweetly. 

“Only this time,” he clarifies when he comes back up, “I’ll be aware of the fact that we’re in a relationship.”

***

Antonio drifts off as they lay there in the sand, and Jayden watches him for a long time, sitting propped up on his elbow. He checks to make sure Antonio isn’t hotter than he should be before he gets up and stretches. 

He’s been meaning to get this done for a while. If the others do come looking for them, they’ll need some sort of signal to find them, and Jayden has seen some old movies. He figures just digging it out in the sand won’t last, so he goes searching for some large dark stones. 

Antonio wakes up when he’s done with the H. “Are you seriously writing ‘Help’ in the sand?” 

Jayden looks over at him, puts his hands on his hips and shrugs. “It’s something to do.”

Antonio rolls his eyes. “Sitting in the shade and napping is something to do. Telling me how pretty I am is something to do,” he says, and Jayden cracks a smile. 

He turns, off to search for more stones, and calls over his shoulder, “You’re very pretty, but I don’t feel like sitting around doing nothing.” 

Jayden keeps walking, goes over to the large rock face where he’s gathered most of the other stones from, and finds a few that he hauls back. 

“Just ‘very pretty’?” Antonio wonders when Jayden comes back, and Jayden smirks to himself as he continues arranging the stones in the sand. 

***

By the evening, Antonio is able to stand and, with Jayden’s help, walk back to their hut. 

Jayden sets the fire up for the night, pops some more of their dinner in his mouth (this time Antonio had called out pointers as Jayden had fished during the sunset), and joins Antonio in the hut. 

He kisses Antonio as he lies down next to him, because he can. 

Antonio looks a little surprised, but happy. “I always sort of thought that you just weren’t into the physical affection,” he admits, letting Jayden wrap an arm around him, “Which I was perfectly happy with. I have to say, though, I like this, too.” 

“You’re the first person I’ve ever kissed,” Jayden confides, but he has a feeling Antonio already knows, “And the first person who ever kissed me.”

“Good decisions,” Antonio says, closing his eyes with a smile, “I make good decisions.” 

***

Antonio’s morpher rings in the afternoon of their tenth day on the island. 

“Antonio? I can’t reach Jayden. Is everything alright?” Ji’s voice comes over the comm, and Antonio hem-haws at it. 

“Oh, yeah, well, you know,” he says casually, “As okay as it ought to be seeing as we’re stranded on a desert island waiting for rescue.” 

The rangers get there in two hours. 

***

Kevin takes the swordfish zord down and brings up the fishing boat, and they salvage some of their belongings. Jayden’s morpher is nowhere to be found. 

On the way back, as they ride in the cockpit of the Battlewing zord, Antonio turns to Jayden. “I think we should go somewhere cool on our next vacation,” he teases, “Like skiing, or hiking.” 

Jayden just shakes his head, grins to himself. 

“Hey, you guys!” Antonio shouts at the other rangers, “You want to hear about how Jayden actually caught a fish?” 

“What?” Mia exclaims, laughing. 

“Pics or it didn’t happen,” Mike says matter-of-factly. 

Jayden laments his inferior fishing skills to the rangers, who laugh, and Antonio makes more jokes. 

***

When they get home, everything is just as it used to be. 

Only now, Jayden kisses Antonio in the morning, and in the evening, and a hundred times in-between. Now Jayden knows what everyone else around them seemed to already know (“Wait,” Emily says, looking confused, “You weren’t dating already?”). 

Now Jayden takes the time to learn real life skills, like how to start a fire from scratch, and how to fish, and he keeps working on the guitar. 

And just like before, Antonio is there to help him (and laugh at him) through all of it. 

Only now, now Jayden sees him. Now Jayden knows why. 

Now, they keep a list on the refrigerator of things they’d like to have when next stranded on a desert island. 

At the top of the list is scrawled, in Antonio’s writing, _‘Each Other’_.


End file.
